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Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

I had kind of gotten away from talking much about the "Gun Guys'" bizarre arguments, because they're too ridiculous and extreme to take seriously. This time, though, they make so little sense that I'm literally at an utter loss as to what they're trying to say.

They seem to be arguing that "strong gun laws" in Montgomery, Alabama have yielded not only a significant drop in "gun crime," but in many other types of crime, as well. What I'm trying to figure out is just what are these "strong gun laws"? According to (presumably) the Gun Guys' ideological allies, the Brady Bunch, Alabama gets an "F" for gun laws. Could it be local laws in Montgomery itself? Apparently not, because (also according to the Brady Bunch) Alabama has preemption, barring municipalities from being any more restrictive of gun rights than the state is. Clearly, the Gun Guys aren't arguing that we have "strong gun laws" at the federal level (they whine continuously about how "weak" they are--and besides, that wouldn't explain Montgomery doing better than other cities at fighting violent crime).

They even point to information sharing among law-enforcement agencies as being part of the key.

Because police had access to not only shared gun information (that same information is what Tiahrt and the NRA are trying to keep from police officers all over the country), and because they had strong, widespread gun laws to convict criminals with, they were actually able to keep those same criminals off the streets and away from firearms.

Wait a second--the Tiahrt Amendment has been in force every year since 2003--if it hasn't blocked the ability of the Montgomery police to do their jobs, how could it have been blocking any other law enforcement agency?

The answer, obviously, is that it couldn't. The BATFE (clearly no friends to gun owners--my bid for the understatement of the year award) and the Fraternal Order of Police (the country's largest police organization) are both strongly in favor of the Tiahrt Amendment, and of making it permanent--a fact that the Gun Guys, the Brady Bunch, and Bloomberg and his Mayoral Minions would prefer not to address.